My use of "modern" is meant to describe when the game was created. I suppose it can be argued that Chess and Go has a significant current following and can be called "modern", but I couldn't think of a concise way to say what I meant.

The use of "only" is an embellishment. It is an attempt to use one of the six principles of persuasion by Dr. Robert Cialdini, scarcity, to make the quote more effective. Besides Chess and Go, I'm not aware of any other perfect information games with a research paper (Hierarchical Portfolio Search) and working AI with the complexity and depth of Prismata. I am happy to be proven wrong though.

You can use the "Inspect Element" in Chrome and then the "Network" tab to see all files being requested by Prismata from Lunarch's data store. When you find a song you like, you can hover over to see the link for the MP3.

I am actually not sure how the get MP3 when you are in the lobby. Maybe it is embedded into the flash player?

For pasting I just set paste in Vim and then use middle click or Shift+Insert to paste from Windows clipboard to mintty, which directs to SSH and then the remote Vim. I would be hesitant to consider any solution that "pulls" the Windows clipboard as that can mean sensitive info can be grabbed by the server.

For yanking from remote, it is more complicated, and would require setup. I have my own dotfile repo so it is with me everywhere I go, so this might not be the most convenient without some setup.

First put this at the top of your ~/.ssh/config . This establishes a remote port forward from server to your computer via SSH.

RemoteForward 64999 127.0.0.1:64999

For GitHub and Bitbucket you have to cancel this out as they don't allow arbitrary port forwards:

As a noobish Prismata player, many time I feel I can't afford a breach because of the loss of the biggest defender. I sort of agree with the article, when it is mainly base set only. It is not too bad to replace a wall / steelsplitter (5~6B) when that is your biggest absorber, but when something like centurion is in play then losing it is fatal in my mind (also mentioned in the article).

I think the problem for me is that the big defenders come up often and aren't as rare as a single unit HP attacker like Lucina. And it don't get the big defender when your opponent does, then your chances of winning aren't so good.

Not sure how to quite mathematically phrase it, but in my mind, you aren't just losing [N-1] HP worth of defenders when you allow a breach but [N-1] HP + (remaining turns till eventual endgame breach * (max absorber HP - 1)). You guys once mentioned that absorb is the most OP mechanic, so it has stuck till my mind. And more often than not, replacing it is not possible due to 1 unit supply, or it not being prompt, even if you have enough resources, and it might not make sense to get backups like Xeno Guardian.

Maybe, I am just overrating the effective extra HP due to absorb, but here is a newbie's two cents.

Actually, after careful consideration, analyzing the competitive nature of our playerbase, we realized that, to many players, it's extremely important to know EXACTLY how skilled they are. So we're introducing our new patented PreciseSkillTM technology to facilitate improved expression to our players' skill down to the last possible decimal digit. Additional digits will be available for the low price of $4.99 for each additional digit.

I completely agree. I mean, when all 7 billion people on Earth are playing Prismata, you better be damn sure that it shows my score as 0.000314592 points higher than the scrub below me (assuming it is still in the 0 - ~2500 range). I don't want the previous million people to have the exact same number next to their name, especially when I am 0.000314592 points better!

We were talking about this in the chat last night, and somebody (maybe Arkanishu?) said something along the lines of:

"Take your time, I'd rather it be done right than go live and be buggy."

It's almost ready. Soon, guys!

EDIT: Basically the issue is in handling some aspects of the persistence. We could have put arena live a week ago if you guys didn't care about keeping your rewards or arena scores or current arena run in the event of a server restart. But doing persistence right requires finalizing a lot of design decisions because we don't want too much junk in the database if we decide to modify the design.